Friday, March 22, 2013

I didn't realize how much paper is attached to children. They are constantly bring home mountains of paper from school. Between graded work, announcements, and letters from the teachers it feels like I am drowning in paper. My counters were buried in it and I was forever losing things I needed. Several ladies on my mom's forum suggested an inbox system for the kids. I loved the idea and was off to search pinterest for ideas. I saw several inboxes made out of cereal boxes and pretty paper. I figured how hard could it be and broke out my supplies. I had printed out labels for each box, found 4 sheets of pretty scrapbook paper that matched my dining room, 2 cereal boxes, packing tape, spray adhesive and my scissors and got started. I marked where I wanted to cut on both boxes at the same time to be sure they were as close to the same as possible. I cut the nook out of the box and then used my spray adhesive to adhere the paper to the box. I then flipped the box over and secured the paper with some packing tape. I then used the second piece of paper to line the inside of the boxes. Using scraps I cut out a decorative piece of paper for the front and then added the label on top of that. I am sure all of you professional crafters can tell I had no idea what I was doing...paper crafts are not my strong suit, but I think it turned out pretty well!

The next part of the project was to make a dry erase board to keep track of what projects are due for each child. I admit that with 6 kids I tend to be a bit forgetful of things that are not due for two weeks. We then end up staying up late the night before something is due trying to get it all done at once. I found these two matching frames at the local Airman's Attic for free, and decided to paint them with some leftover paint I had stored in the attic. I didn't have any newspaper so we lined the counter with construction paper and got started.
Once the paint was dry I added a personalized to do page I printed and framed it as normal. I hung the frames above the inboxes and added a dry erase marker on a string. Now when something comes in for one of the girls I can add it to the inbox and write the due date on the board!

Total invested $0 but man is this going to save me a whole lot of stress!